Electronic Consent (e-Consent)

Electronic-Consent (e-Consent) is a platform for consenting patients or research subjects either on site or at home using a computer-based consent form rather than traditional paper documentation. Consent forms can be implemented in a REDCap survey via computer, mobile phone, or tablet.

To use the e-consent module, please request a project by completing the request form: https://rc.med.ubc.ca/redcap/surveys/?s=HEAXHW4LW7

If your research project needs to be de-identified as per the REB, you must request a separate project to host your e-consent data. E-consent data, as it contains identifiers, should be hosted separately from your research project data; hence your team will have two REDCap projects. This will better protect identifiers and increase the security of your data. In addition, we recommend coding your consent question as a "yes/ no" question (ie. 1, I consent / 0, I do not consent), as recommended by the REB.

It is the responsibility of the research team to get the use of e-consenting in their project approved by the Research Ethics Board prior to implementation. In your ethics application, we suggest adding this statement to your consent form: "Your electronic consent form will be stored in the UBC Faculty of Medicine's secured network in Vancouver, BC. Only authorized personnel will be able to access it."

Step 1: Enable surveys on the "Project Setup" page.

Step 2: Set up a survey instrument. Fields in this instrument should include:

a descriptive field with the consent language
An "agree to consent" checkbox / text box
identifier fields (Name, Date of Birth, Personal Health Number)

Step 3: Enable the instrument as a survey by clicking "Enable" or by updating survey status through "Survey Settings"

Step 4: In the Survey Settings, scroll to the bottom and select "Auto-Archiver + e-Consent Framework". If you cannot select this option, contact the FoM Research DM team (fom.redcap@ubc.ca) to activate this functionality.

Step 5: Fill out the e-Consent Framework Options that appear after selecting "Auto-Archiver + e-Consent Framework".

Consent-specific PDF will have values of the e-Consent Framework Options inserted at the bottom of each page in the PDF as extra documentation (i.e. participant consent information).

Example of footer of the Consent-specific PDF:

There are mandatory and optional fields.

Footer mandatory fields: e-Consent version, First name, Last name
Footer optional fields: e-Consent type (e.g. pediatrics), Date of Birth (DOB)

Optional Forced Signature Field: to indicate which field is the signature so that if the participant had to change something in the form and click previous page, the signature field values get erased and it forces participant to 'sign' (fill in) the field again before submitting the form.

NOTE: Please check with your REB what specific field type will be acceptable as the signature for your e-consent.

Certification Page:

Before a participant completes the survey, an extra certification page is added to the end of the survey that displays a PDF copy of the document in which they will be asked to confirm that all information in the document is correct. The survey will not be complete until they confirm and "submit" this certification step.

Static copies of survey responses will be stored in the File Repository.

Hiding survey button

You have selected an option that triggers this survey to end right now.

To save your responses and end the survey, click the 'End Survey' button below. If you have selected the wrong option by accident and/or wish to return to the survey, click the 'Return and Edit Response' button.